Ron Paul ends ‘active campaigning’ after spending five times more than Romney for each delegate won

Maverick Republican-cum-Libertarian Texas Congressman Ron Paul Monday suspended his “campaigning” for President while insisting his “campaign” will go on.

Paul said he doesn’t have the “many tens of millions of dollars” needed to actively campaign in the 11 remaining primary contests.

In a message to his supporters, Paul said:

Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted. Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have.

Instead, Paul said he will continue to focus on state conventions:

Our campaign will continue to work in the state convention process. We will continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future.

While that strategy might gain Paul a few more delegates to add to his current total of 104 it will not bring him close to the GOP nomination that presumptive nominee Mitt Romney is expected to capture by early June. Romney has 973 of the 1,114 delegates he needs to capture the nomination.

An examination of Paul’s Federal Election Commison (FEC) reports by Capitol Hill Blue shows he did raise tens of millions of dollars — $36 million – through the end of March and spent $34.97 million, leaving $1.78 million cash on hand. That averages out to $346,153 for each of Paul’s 104 delegates to date.

By comparison, Romney raised $86.2 million for the same period and spent $76.180 million, leaving the former Massachusetts governor with about $10 million in cash. Romney’s expenditures average out to $78,108 per delegate.

Which means Paul, the fiscal conservative who claims the government wastes money, spent nearly five times more than Romney for each delegate captured.

By moving from active campaigning to an inside strategy, Paul appears to be admitting that he does not have the broad voter appeal to become the GOP nominee, much less President.

As David A. Fahrenthold notes in The Washington Post:

This announcement does not change the plot of the GOP race: Mitt Romney is the presumed nominee. Paul isn’t, and wasn’t, and won’t be.

But Paul’s decision does reveal something about him, and his struggles to reach a broader electorate.

In this race, Paul has cast himself as a maverick outsider — more in touch with the average voter than with party bosses. But he has actually run behind other candidates in mass votes: out of 39 state primaries and caucuses, Paul won zero.

Instead, this outsider actually excels most in the party’s inside game: using his enthusiastic fan base to master the GOP’s boring internal processes.

Paul’s always enthusiastic supporters, of course, see things differently, claiming their candidate has actually won more than one primary but was denied victory by either voter fraud or gamesmanship by the Republican establishment.

Paul’s decision to exit the “active campaigning” stage, however, confirms the political reality that this – his third unsuccessful campaign for President – was doomed from the start.

I wonder if we’re ever going to hear about what happened to that million and three-quarters. I’m sure there’s all kinds of FEC regulations about what it could be spent upon, but who’s going to look too closely now?

A little shell-company/charity shuffling, and off it goes into nowhereland. Or perhaps into a slightly-used Bugatti Veyron.

I suppose he could give it back to his donors *cough* *giggle* *cough* Ahem. Never mind.

J.

PS – Of course, Governor Romney still has far more “in hand”, but then his candidacy is still a going concern. I have no idea what the Obama campaign has ‘in hand’ these days. Probably a lot. J.

This web site does not exist to promote partisan blogs and your continuous efforts to link to them will be moderated — as are efforts of others to flood us with links to partisan sites from the right or the left.

Links are welcome when they are used to bolster the arguments of a poster. But those links should be to sites that offer facts, not propaganda. In many cases, you don’t offer arguments. You just offers up a link to some fringe partisan site.

That Hot Air “blog” is as much a news aggregator as is CHB, posting news articles and commentary from numerous mainstream sources around the world, and taking comments from its readers. The only difference is it provides many more points of view.

As for my characterization of why I linked to it, I thought saying the article had a “strategic perspective” could add context to your own article, which would allow better to understanding.

We are not an news aggregator. Aggregators post links to other web sites and publish very little original content. We are a news site. Our news stories are produced by our staff or selected from news services to which we subscribe and pay a fee to use. When we link to another site it’s part of a news story or an opinion column.

That’s why Capitol Hill Blue’s articles are listed on Google News and others news aggregation sites. Hotair.com is not because the primary original material produced is from a one-man blog section.

We don’t look for or give a damn about “points of view.” We produce our own stories or publish news articles from established sources. And don’t give me a trite crap line about being “lefist.” A leftist site would not publish the criticism that we do about Obama and Democrats. You should know that.

There is a difference Mac between partisan and non-partisan. You should know that too.

I’ve restored your comment. The readers can decide if the thinking behind the blog post is “strategic.”

My leftist comment was in response to your charge of my being a partisan… apparently for posting a link to a more conservative website, no matter the content of the article. The article itself was not pushing a partisan agenda, just analyzing the apparently strategic motives driving the Ron Paul candidacy. It ain’t propaganda, though it might be decribing some.

When Ron Paul pulled a strong finish in Iowa Straw Poll, then came in second on many subsequent polls, but was as ignored as if he was running for President of the school board of West Nowhere. Was the media to blame? Well, yes in part. There were several videos of exactly the phenomenon, making the once and former Swiss citizen sound like the next best choice to the current beach sandal, currently the top of the Red tinged heap.

Was it the media? Not at all. Ron Paul never seemed to be in it strongly enough to go for the kill to get to the top. He seemed happy, even if relegated to another also-ran run for the nomination. Even when he briefly was able to talk with credibility about a brokered convention, he didn’t speak with conviction that is necessary to credibility.

The media has been steering every contest for decades. Do they do this as sellouts? Likely not. They, like the rest of the country, are no longer interested in quality candidates for office. Media want ratings, gossip, quick sound bytes and more ratings.

Look at our so called leaders and then try to convince yourself that this is the best the country can do. We need more throwbacks to the days when the Constitution was inviolate in the mind of the politician and a copy was also in the pocket of the politician at all times.

Today, we have leaders who think nothing of throwing out the Bill of Rights, except the Third Amendment. The Magna Carta died with the last president, and Posse Comitatus died with this one. We’re all in a heap of trouble, and it doesn’t begin or end with Ron Paul. We need our liberty, and there isn’t a one of them, on either side, sufficient to the task of regaining it for us or our posterity.

Woody:
I agree with what you said. If I was in the campaign room with Ron I would have argued to “say nothing” on the primary issue. This was a “gaff” in my opinion. For, example they stood aside in Florida. So, no big deal. I will continue to fund Ron Paul because I value my Liberty. In regard the the GOP YOU HAVEN’T EARNED IT!

Sorry Woody but media had nothing to do with Paul’s demise. He and he alone is responsible for his undoing, from his ever-changing stories on the racist newsletters to his advocacy of tin-foil hat conspiracy theories.

Paul’s base is about 10-12 percent of the electorate — standard fare for a fringe candidate. He never did and never will have the broad voter support necessary to win and campaigns that can’t win produce a lot of noise but little else.

It’s a standard political ploy to blame the media for failure in politics but many news outlets — corporate and otherwise — saw Paul’s campaign as a failure from the beginning.

That’s political reality — something that is lost on the Paul faithful.

It’s hard to deny the 89 seconds CBS allotted him in the early debates certainly could have hurt his prospects. It’s hard to deny the television and print media completely ignoring his campaign and failing to even mention he was in the race for a good 90 days. It’s hard to deny how they would comment on Romney coming in first, then Santorum in third, skipping over the second place finisher entirely just so they didn’t have to mention his name. Watch Indecision 2012 – Corn Polled Edition

It’s important to ask ourselves, why? Why did corporate media act like this? What were they so afraid of? Why do we allow them to have such an impact on our election process? And likewise, what else does our corporate media fail to report on?

“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.” – Woodrow Wilson